Prince William grants $100K to education tech startup Scriyb

The Prince William Board of County Supervisors has signed a $100,000 performance agreement with Scriyb, LLC, a technology startup, to fund a teaching platform that will assist with online education.

According to a release, Scriyb hopes to use the grant money to work on their cloud-based teaching platform that will be used for online education, and “to scale-up and deliver on its mission of enticing a future generation of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) trained workforce to address the high-skill shortage needs regionally and nationally.”

Scriyb started as a company in George Mason University’s Virginia Serious Game Institute startup incubator in Manassas.

The grant funding came from the Prince William County Economic Development Opportunity Fund and with matching funds from the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Center for Innovative Technology GAP Funds, Scriyb is able to fund 5 full-time positions and move their existing 13 employees and $25,000 in equipment to the Prince William area, stated a release.

“By reshaping access to education we are unlocking the potential to continue to deliver a highly-skilled workforce and fundamentally shift the new economic paradigm. We hope this marks just the beginning of the potential for Scriyb and the advancement in STEM training,” stated Chairman Corey Stewart in a release.

More on Scriyb, from a release:

“We’re thrilled to be able to deliver Scriyb, a truly important game-changing concept in online learning, to revolutionize learning and expand the horizon of new educational opportunities,” said Christopher Etesse, President & CEO, Scriyb. “It is my passion to transform Scriyb into the foremost leading enterprise in online learning, having been a ‘serial entrepreneur’ in technology for most of my career.”

According to Scriyb, its cloud-based online education platform bridges the gap for increased demand for specialized STEM instruction of K-12 students, allowing a single teacher to effectively instruct thousands of students in real-time, via a live streaming tool, without sacrificing quality of instruction. Scriyb’s patent-pending algorithms segments an instruction course’s body of students into smaller groups, creating ideal peer-to-peer learning and teacher-student matching, while virtually tracking, measuring, analyzing and correctly balancing the social learning environment.

“Scriyb has already been successfully used to teach cutting edge STEM courses to several thousand students,” added Etesse. “Jurisdictions across the nation could save millions in transportation costs alone, via true online learning. Similar to Uber, but for teachers and schools to scale computer gaming, cybersecurity, programming, entrepreneurship, to meet the open employment needs now.”

Most recently,Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA), the largest institution of higher education in the Commonwealth of Virginia, with two campuses located in Prince William County, received a $100,000 grant from the Capital One Foundation. This grant will launch aCybersecurity Career Pathways Projectthat will inform and support middle and high school students in Northern Virginia who wish to explore and hopefully pursue a career in cybersecurity. Scriyb’s online platform will be used to deliver the project lessons to the students of two participating Prince William County public high schools – Forest Park and Potomac. The dual enrollment program will begin in Spring 2017 and benefit 200 students.